Chopped Cheese (2024)

FAQs

What does chopped cheese mean in slang? ›

What I lingo, we, like, put some seasoning to it. Sometimes instead of saying, yo, you chop, like, oh, you chop cheese. That means you extra unattractive. Like, you chop cheese.

Found in bodegas throughout Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens, it is made on a grill with ground beef (typically pre-formed ground beef patties), onions, adobo or other seasonings, and cheese, all of which are chopped together on the grill as the meat and onions cook and the cheese melts.

The number-one difference separating the sandwiches lies in the meat they use. For an authentic Philly cheesesteak, you'll need beef steak strips or thinly sliced ribeye while a chopped cheese simply uses ground beef, such as the kind you would use to form a burger patty or as taco meat.

The chopped cheese is from New York. Its exact origination in the city is up for debate. Most say it's from Harlem. Some say it's from the Spanish Harlem.

Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chop up. (African-American Vernacular, slang) To catch up with a person, especially after a long time apart.

The chopped cheese is a New York success story — with a somewhat charged twist. The sandwich, also called a chop cheese — ground beef with onions, topped by melted cheese and served with lettuce, tomatoes and condiments on a hero roll — has long been a staple of bodegas in Harlem and the Bronx.

For the uninitiated, a chopped cheese or “chop cheese” is a sandwich consisting of ground beef, melted cheese, onions, lettuce, tomato and condiments on a hero roll. It's often compared (somewhat controversially) to a cheeseburger, sloppy Joe or cheesesteak.

You can still stop in to try the original up in Harlem, at Hajji's.

So, what is it? Well, it's basically a hamburger on a hero roll, featuring beef patties, American cheese, and toppings such as lettuce and tomatoes. The “chopped” part refers to the hamburger meat being finely chopped before the cheese is added on top (see my recipe video below!).

A cheesesteak (also known as a Philadelphia cheesesteak, Philly cheesesteak, cheesesteak sandwich, cheese steak, or steak and cheese) is a sandwich made from thinly sliced pieces of beefsteak and melted cheese in a long hoagie roll.

How to order a steak and cheese in Philly? ›

First, ask for the kind of cheese you desire, Whiz or otherwise. Then say your onion choice: “wit” means with onions, and “witout” means without. For example, if you order a “whiz wit,” you'll get a steak with Cheez Whiz and onions. Asking for “American witout” scores you a steak with white American, no onions.

Chopped cheese is a beloved sandwich familiar to many who have frequented bodegas in pockets of New York City. With seasoned ground beef and American cheese on a hoagie roll with toppings, it's a filling handheld meal.

Wisconsin's nickname as “America's Dairyland” punctuates the state's leading position within the U.S. dairy industry. More than three and a half billion pounds of cheese are produced in Wisconsin. California is the second largest producer.

(slang) (Of a person) ugly.

Cheese as a slang term for money dates back to the mid-1800s. The slang term spread in the 1990s, thanks in part to its use in prominent hip-hop lyrics, such as in the chorus of Jay-Z's 1999 song “Big Pimpin'”: “We be big pimpin', spendin' cheese.”

noun. slang. : informer, stool pigeon, rat.